Are your children more equal than ours, Mr Hoon?

NEW Labour are much better than they used to be at hiding their class-war mean streak.

But it is still there deep down and the latest proposals to interfere in the area of work experience are a clear sign that Gordon Brown remains in thrall to these discredited notions.

Their plans cannot be achieved without a monstrous bureaucracy to monitor the backgrounds of all those in work experience, creating the same absurdities as those already unleashed by the race-relations industry and the sex discrimination lobby.

Geoff Hoon has arranged special tuition for his daughter to increase her chances of winning a place at an elite university

Such placings are normally offered by private business as a gesture of goodwill.

They work best where the young people involved are engaged and interested inthe workplace. Naturally, that means employers will look more favourably onapplicants from good schools.

It is not up to employers to try to repair the injustices imposed on our societyby an education system that discriminates heavily against the poor from themoment they enter school.

Nor should it be up to universities to lower their standards to compensate for the weakness of state education.

The same bad ideas – founded on resentment rather than reason – explainthis scheme and Labour’s long war against excellence in education.

The unending list of Labour figures who have chosen selective or private schools –or secretly resorted to private tuition – is proof they do not believe their ownpropaganda about improving standards.

Yet another senior Minister has been found out ensuring his own offspringremains more equal than others. Having sent his child to state schools, GeoffHoon has arranged special tuition for her, to increase her chances of winninga place at an elite university.

It is difficult to see how this is different in principle from the behaviour of parents who openly pay fees to send their sons and daughters to private schools but who feel increasingly discriminated against by universities trying to fill state school quotas.

Genuine equality – of opportunity – can be achieved only when the state school system once again offers access to the best possible schooling on the basis of excellence, not wealth, influence or postcode.

Not such a cool idea.

AT FIRST sight, the idea of a fridge that helps save the nation’s energy is ratherattractive. But the rapid march of technology in the past 20 years has repeatedlyturned out to be a double-edged sword, by which we have gained conveniencebut lost privacy and control.